level 5

Ushiro is a cancelled horror-themed, turn-based rpg that was being developed for PSP by Level 5. The game was officially announced and showed in 2008. Nothing much is known about this game apart from brief informations that appeared on 1up:

Ushiro (PSP) is a first for Level-5 — a horror RPG. You play Reiichiro Ushiro, a newly-minted shinigami spirit who has the power to give people near the brink of death a single wish in exchange for their lives. Whether listening in on conversations in spirit mode, possessing the living to do your bidding, or fighting personifications of the evil in man’s heart, you can be sure that being a not-so-friendly ghost is nothing if not hectic.

In 2009, Level 5 removed Ushiro section from their website, so it’s probably cancelled, but maybe it will be resurrected in the future for another platform. Below we can see the original trailer translated in english.

Ni no Kuni​ is a RPG developed by Level-5 in collaboration with Studio Ghibli, released for the DS in december 2010. As we can read in Wikipedia, Ni no Kuni was first announced in the Japanese publication Famitsu in September 2008, while the development on the animation aspects of the game had begun in July 2008. In those 2 years,the game evolved a lot and Megalol was able to notice various differences between the beta (screens on the left) and the final version (screens on the right). Check the gallery below for a comparison! Can you find all the differences? The beta world map is especially interesting.

Fantasy Life is a quest-based RPG / adventure game that was developed by Level-5 and Brownie Brown. It was released on Nintendo 3DS in Japan on December 27, 2012, and then later in 2014 in Western territories. However, the game was was first planned to be released on the Nintendo DS; a version, which was later cancelled.

When it began life on DS, the game had a 2D visual style, similar to the one seen in Mother 3. It was first announced at Level-5 Vision 2009 on August 25, 2009, during which time it was being targeted for a 2010 release. The developers presented the first early screenshots of the game at the event, as well as a selection of concept art assets:

Level-5, however, made the call put the project on hold, before resuming development for the 3DS, due to sales forecasts. When it resurfaced on its new platform in October 2010, it was revealed that the game had underwent a big change in art direction. The 2D art of the DS version was done away with, and it had been rebuilt in a 3D engine.

Dark Cloud is an Action RPG developed for the Playstation 2 by Level-5 and published by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2000 and 2001 for Japan and American/PAL regions respectively. As we can read in Wikipedia, Dark Cloud was the first game of the Japanese developer Level-5, headed by designer Akihiro Hino. When the PlayStation 2 was announced on March 2, 1999, Sony president and CEO Ken Kutaragi used a demo of Dark Cloud to showcase the capabilities of the platform. However, many elements of the demo were not used in the release version of the game.

In 1999, Sony had an early playable version of Dark Cloud at the Tokyo Game Show. This version focused on a character who needed to return a floating piece of land back to where it originally came from but its location had been replaced with an evil kingdom. The world building parts where demonstrated in this version. At the Tokyo Game Show in 2000 a more complete demo was available far more similar to the final version.

CallingCard noticed various differences in the early video:

The main character, Toan, had a fair redesign between this demo and the final release.

The magic carpet never appears in game as far as I’m aware.

The ability to jump in and out of the water as seen around the 1:00 mark was removed.

The world map is pretty much the same, can’t see anything new aside from the floating island town area which I don’t recall being in the game. Given that it’s just a large blank area, it might’ve been used for demonstration purposes only.

Georama system looks almost identical in-game as it does in beta, though the volcanoes never made it in to the final product.

Find your unseen game:

Search

What do we do?

Unseen64 is an archive to preserve articles, screens and videos for cancelled, beta & unseen videogames. Every change and cut creates a different gaming experience: we would like to save some documents of this evolution for curiosity, historic and artistic preservation. We are a collective of gamers from all around the world, in our limited free time we do the best we can to remember these lost games. You can help too! All Unseen64 articles are published in good faith & fair use, if you find any errors or issues regarding some of them, just let us know.

Buy Games to Support U64:

Do you like Unseen64? If you buy something from Amazon using our links and banners, we get a small percentage, for you is free, you don't pay anything more, but for us it helps a lot! Currently this is working for Amazon.com, Amazon.it and Amazon.co.uk :)

Unseen 64 Archive

If you want to help U64:

Unseen 64 is an independent site. No money is generated from our work so we must pay each and every server bill ourselves. Thanks to your support we were able to rise 600$ to pay the server for 2016! We are super happy :) Future donations will be set aside in a "preservation fund", for emergency site expenses, support for the Unseen64 Book Project and other equipment that could help the archive: all expenses will be discussed with our patrons before to be used! For more details check: How does Unseen64 use Donations? If you want to donate some of your love, we accept one-off donations through PayPal / Credit Card and pledges on Patreon! You can just donate how much or little you want. Every cent is really appreciated and sent towards the U64 Archive. Thank you for even reading this :)